I recently drew out for Boo all of the occupations that have preceded her in our family tree. She thought it was awesome that she was the product of: firefighters, homemakers, actuaries, farmers, entrepreneurs, bankers, contractors, bridge engineers etc. In church the other day, my pastor asked the congregation how many people had been in the same job for at least 30 years…..only a handful of people raised their hand. It got me thinking about how my grandparents and great grandparents really only had one or two occupations their whole life….but my parents and I have had several.

For today’s journal entry, create a family tree of occupations. Be as detailed as you can. Do you think your history had any influence on what you do today? [Read more…]

More word association…..I love these. I end up with some great stuff in my journal as a result. Remember….you can write as much or as little as you like. Maybe you remember where you were at a certain moment…..or maybe there are many events or people you associate with one of the words. Make a list or write out more detail. It’s up to you!

Remember the map you made of your childhood classroom? Let’s skip ahead to your teenage years. Can you remember what your bedroom looked like? What did you have hanging on the walls? What kind of bedding did you have? Maybe you had shag carpeting or cold hardwood floors. Did you share a room with a sibling?

Sometimes just one word can cause our mind to venture way back into it’s archives and bring out a memory or a feeling from the past. As you read each of the words in today’s prompt, what comes to mind? For example if I read or hear the word Mustang….you might think of a car, or a horse or a football team……the word association you have is unique to your memories and experience:

Mustang:
Dad used to take me to Joe’s Mustang to buy crickets for fishing. The gas station had a huge rust colored horse that looked as if it were rearing up and out of the sign. I looked forward to the can of Country Time Lemonade Dad would buy me as a special treat. I remember the smell of gasoline and motor oil mixed with the pungent smell of catfish bait.

An art journal time lapse video … I’m taking a week off from The Lil Journal Project. I made this time lapse of some art journal pages to show the process. I don’t put a lot of thought into the pages….I just do it….making a mess as I go. I love the song too: Lights by Ellie Goulding.

When my father passed away, he left binders full of business cards, napkins with phone numbers and zillions of contacts. He was such a social person with a huge network of friends. I would have loved to see a map of how he knew everyone and where he had met them. My social map isn’t so complicated….it was an easy map to lay out:

If a GPS was tracking your every move for a week, what would your map look like? I sketched a little map of the roads I typically travel from day to day in my journal and traced the routes: (I looked up my address on Google Map to help sketch an aerial view).

I thought it was so cool that this guy (Aaron Parecki) wore a GPS device for a few years and tracked his movements. Look at the cool GPS log of his travels for the first two months of 2012 in Portland:

If you drive as much as my husband in a day you might want to just do a daily map. Or maybe you are laid up in your house and can’t leave…..track your movements in your small space. Remember the day I mapped out my bathroom trips during chemotherapy ? Ok, maybe I embellished the little twirling movements….but that map told a great story…..about the lesson of picking a seat closer to the bathroom!! 5 bags of fluid in 5 hours….insanity.

Seriously, did you know there was a magazine for Alpacas? That’s on my list….I just want to see what it’s all about. Going through Magazine.com it was like Christmas thinking about all the magazines I’d love to have access to if money and time were no object. I even ran out of room on my page and had to start editing…..the total came to 96. I guess I have a LOT of interests! I love home magazines, finance magazines, news magazines, art magazines, photography magazines. I don’t have any tattoos but I think a tattoo magazine would be awesome…..oh and maybe a skateboarding magazine. There’s a magazine for Alfred Hitchcock? Sign me up! Ranger Rick? Looooove it. Smithsonian? I need it! Omg…..I need the Sudoku and brainteaser magazines too! And Reader’s Digest! I’ll read just about anything I can get my hands on…..even the airline magazines aren’t safe. I’m out of control. I need an “interest” intervention…..